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She said Miss Wilding sounded ‘broken’ when she spoke to her. Her relationship with Mr Richardson was over and she had a panic alarm fitted at her home and told police she had not had any contact with Mr Richardson.

Mrs Aunger said Mr Richardson was ‘devouring’ drugs during house parties and added: “Throughout 2016 Katie could sense that things were getting out of hand and wanted to get out of the situation.”

During one phone call to her he said he would never have given Katie so many drugs if he had known she had never taken them before, she said.

He said if he couldn’t have her nobody else could, and, Mrs Aunger said, he told her he could easily kill her with drugs and nobody would ever be able to prove it.

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Earlier in the hearing she said her daughter was very shy and a ‘mummy’s girl’ when she was young -the youngest of four daughters and ‘loved by everybody’. When she decided to become a hairdresser she ‘grew up overnight’.

She was an award-winning hairdresser and worked in Australia before she met Mr Richardson. She had many friends. “When Katie made friends she made them for life,” said her mother. “She was a very well-loved young lady and I was very, very proud of her.”

However she was referred to mental health professionals after suffering a panic attack when her drink was spiked with ecstasy and she became ill. Doctors also said she was suffering from depression.

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Mrs Aunger said she knew her daughter was experimenting with drugs and ‘liked to smoke weed’. “I didn’t like it and I don’t agree with it,” said Mrs Aunger.

Miss Wilding and Mr Richardson shared a flat after she returned from Australia. The coroner asked Mrs Aunger: “Was there ever a quiet moment in the relationship?” Mrs Aunger replied: “No. She loved him very much but all we seemed to hear about was the bad things.

“There is no doubt she absolutely loved him. He was her first proper grown-up, committed relationship. When it was good it was amazing, she said.

“But Katie started taking drugs more often when she was with Mitchell. We didn’t know he was dealing drugs until quite near the end.”

Mrs Aunger said she saw her daughter a number of times immediately after she was assaulted for the second time. “She was very upbeat and started to see her friends again,” she said.

However, she missed a meeting with her mother and, said Mrs Aunger: “I was starting to worry that she was back in touch with Mitchell again.” Mrs Aunger went to her daughter’s flat in Torquay to visit her but she was not there.

She went on: “November 14 is my daughter Emma’s birthday. I thought if we hadn’t heard from her by the end of that day I would go round to her flat. That was the day the police came to the door and told us Katie was dead.

“Katie had so much to live for. She did not go into that flat aiming to die that day. We don’t know why she was there.”